


I fake it so real

by ninhursag



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, F/F, Gen, Genderswap, Growing Up, canon typical hateful language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28383900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: A genderswap au, where Rona Lynch is the daughter of a dream who is not a woman and Eve Parrish is living in a nightmare that she is desperate to become her way out of and into something else.Just a few sketches in time.
Relationships: Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	I fake it so real

Rona Lynch knew something was wrong was her mom with certainty when she was thirteen and terrified, though of course she didn't acknowledge it. Before that day her mother was always the soother, kissing their foreheads, admiring their constructions and games and eagerly involved in their stories while sharing her own. The perfect dream of a mother, combing Rona's tangled curls and putting them in ribbons with equal aplomb to managing her skinned knees and scratches.

But when, on a casual nothing of an early Thursday morning, Rona woke up screaming, surrounded by blood, all over her sheets, soaking her nightgown. Declan came running, white faced and sleep mussed hair, heavy looking stick in one hand, prepared to take on a nightmare that may have manifested. And Aurora, golden and serene with bandaids and disinfectant.

They both stopped. Looked at her and at each other, confused. But it was Declan, her irritant of a brother who had unfairly gotten too tall and strong to box with his sister properly, who figured it out and not Mom. 

Aurora helped her, of course, got her into the bath and stroked her hair while she bled between her legs and cried. Aurora cleaned the sheets by way of a washing machine that never failed to take away anything, even blood.

But Declan came back an hour later carrying a CVS bag with a motley assortment of pads and tampons, a blue bottle of aleve and an explanatory booklet about our changing bodies that needed to be ripped into shreds and lit on fire. He was red faced from the trip, like a fifteen year old boy who had to take care of his confused little sister's first period on his own.

A boy and a girl who had a mother right there who should have been very well equipped to manage this. Who should have gone through it herself.

Rona couldn't, she could not, she did not, push down the path of the thoughts she had when her mind settled and she understood fully that her body's betrayal was natural and expected. She would not, could not, understand that her golden mother's lack of understanding was something not at all natural.

She did not listen when dad came home, all sack of presents and wild joy, twirling hugs for his best girl. Not when she heard Declan corner him in the kitchen, bitter and angry and just hiss, "you made her wrong. You made her _wrong_. What else is she missing?"

Rona covered her ears and ran the last part chasing her, "Rona needs to be around actual people, dad. She needs to go to an actual school."

After that, Declan threw a brochure for a day school for girls at dad and everything got worse. Fucking Declan.

**

Eve Parrish watched the women around her carefully when she was old enough to understand. There were women like her mother, worn out and sunstained, wearing sweat pants or too tight jeans. Like the girls at school, who played at the edge of the dress code to make the boys look down their shirts and up their skirts.

They hooted at her too, before she was even old enough to understand, a little girl in her shorts and faded unicorn t-shirt from goodwill.

There were other women though. Teachers at her school, dressed more carefully with low slung flats that weren't tennis shoes.

But it wasn't them Eve set her sights on. It was something too high, the carefully perfect mothers and sisters and girlfriends that belonged to the Aglionby boys. She matched their looks to magazines from the library, spent some of her precious study time carefully examining makeup blogs that explained what could be purchased at a drugstore at a fraction of the cost and how to get the right effect, coloring and skin tones, cold and warm.

She didn't wear her experiments out but once, when her mother glared at her, just like when she spent too long on her homework, getting it just right without guidance. "Wash your face, Eve," she said. "You ain't too good for us and I won’t have you going out like you are."

Her dad slapped her one for emphasis but not hard enough to really bruise. Eve washed her face. 

When she wore makeup that was too bright and cheap like the other girls in the trailer park no one had anything to say, not beyond a spat out, "you let one of them boys squirt in you, you're on your own with whatever squirts out, girl."

It doesn’t leave a mark on her, the words. It doesn’t, there's nothing there to see.

**

In the little room above St. Agnes that is her first home, she carefully collects products and applies them, subtle and shaded and hard earned, turning a plain freckled face into something smooth and better. Rona watches her from a legs crossed position on the floor like she's doing some kind of magic.

It’s bewildering to watch out of the corner of the mirror, the starry softness in Rona Lynch’s blue blue eyes.

“Come here,” Eve offers. Impulsively. 

“You’re not putting that on me,” Rona protests, mouth curling.

That makes Eve laugh and shake her head. “No. Your skintone is all wrong for anything I would wear. Come here.” 

Rona comes, because that’s what Rona does. Eve takes one of her hands in her own, putting some concealer on a wedge and pressing the wedge into Rona’s uncertain fingers. “Here,” she says, and lets the fingers and wedge rest on her own throat. “Blend here.” 

Rona’s hands tremble a little on her skin.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me @ninwshimsy on tumble if you want.


End file.
